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I quit just as RoR came out. Lots of reasons for that, one being the mounted combat I experienced in the RoR beta. I figured if this was the big draw of the xpac, I just wasn't interested.

Flash forward to last week, I hear a new xpac is coming out and totally changing the way traits work, actually making you choose in how you want to build your character, etc. I buy a few months of game time, grab RoR with TP I was lucky enough to still have, and start working through it. MC is WAY better than back in RoR beta (over a year later I would hope so), and in fact it's not too bad for me. Whereas in RoR beta I honestly could not stand using it for more than a few seconds at a time, now it's enjoyable. Turning is weird at first, but getting used to the "throttle and brake" type system was okay. I just look at it as a driving game, and those are fun. Gotta slow down a bit to make tight turns if I'm using it in towns. Out in the open field it's fun to do a lot of damage, and get around much quicker than other mounts.

Problems of course, mostly lag and the lack of meaningful skills to use. For the amount of the time I actually spend "forced" to MC (doing content clearly designed for it) those issues aren't really that bad.

If it becomes a larger part of the game I would probably change my tune, but I like how it is now. Parts of the RoR landscape, and a couple quests, that's about it. A skirmish wouldn't bother me in the least, I don't have to like everything to still find a way to enjoy the game. If there are a significant number of players out there who would really love a MC skirmish, I don't see a reason to deny them that. Could be fun, could be dumb, but I don't have a problem with 1 skirmish expanding MC a bit.

I so far love mounted combat. Took some time to get used to the Controls, but when you get the hang of it, it´s great fun!

It gets pretty Close to how the Rohirrim charged the Uruk-Hai band (With merrin and pippin) at night in the Movies.

The mounted skills do a lot more damage than ground combat skills, so it makes up for it and you end up killing mobs actually slightly faster mounted than on ground, which makes it more fun!

I think it´s ok that there aren´t too many mounted attack skills, as when you have to focus on both riding and combat, you do not want 3 hotbars full of attack skills. It doesn´t make it any more interesting nor more skilled.

Personally I hate MC. I think it is an atrocious waste of time and I dread each and every character I have to take to Rohan... I actually held off for A LONG time on doing Wildemore because I was afraid I would have to do some more MC with my guard.
Clearly there are some weirdos (I say this in love ;}) who like MC, so clearly Turbine won't drop it. But I think that they could make it optional. Let the people that like it do it, and give them a place to do it, but don't make those of us who hate it (and there are quite a few of us. At least on Elendilmir) do it to advance the game. I've bought HD and am hoping against hope that I will not be forced to MC through the whole bloody expansion.
If we HAVE to keep doing it, then please please please Turbine let us play our class the way it was designed... and for the love of the LotR gods, give us more skills. My guard or RK (both at cap) when on foot are always popping off a skill. Even my cappy is 99% of the time popping off a skill. I get on horseback and I ride in circles around a mob, or have it chasing me, while I occasionally pop off a skill that barely hurts it. This is absurd. My guard doesn't kite! My guard stands still and hits mobs until they fall over. When I get on a horse, I'm reduced to this weak kiting mess... My RK is built on the tough side and she weakens mobs from deep and then burns em up close. Can't do that either on a horse. Most of the time I die because I pull 3 or 4 extra mobs since I can't see anything and I am making huge @rse turns or chasing some runaway mob for miles trying to get the last hit in.

TL : DR - MC sucks IMHO. Make it an OPTION. If not an OPTION, then PLEASE MORE SKILLS!

Mounted combat is awsome!

After the update the rubberbanding is almost gone and I love it!
If you are having lag-issues, disable "frill distance" and, if needed distant imposters too.

As many people said already, it takes some practice to be able to handle your steed. It is also very important to realize that when you first get your steed it will not be so strong and a bit hard to control. My advice is to put all your first points in agility, no matter what steed you have. This will help you a lot with manoeuvring your steed. If you want to change how you spent your points later on you can do it at any time.

I know that some people I have talked to in game told me that they control their WS with W, A, S, D and some of them also clicking their skills with the mouse. Maybe some people in this thread do that too. IF YOU ARE DOING THIS, MC WILL BE VERY HARD AND NOT AS FUN AS IT CAN BE! I mean no disrespect but I would say that if you're doing this you have only experienced half of what mounted combat can be. I know this because I did this when I got my first WS. Then I read a few guides and after that I tried several different tactics.

I will try to describe what I found out worked best for me and how I did to learn it:

(And I know it's not revolutionary. A lot of people do this. I just thought it might be useful for some people maybe)

Again this will take some time to learn! BE PATIENT!!!

-Learn to control your steed with the mouse only! The big advantage with this is that camera pans with the way you turn. To turn, hold R mouse button. To increase speed, hold R+L mouse button. To go from i.e. Trot to Canter just tap R+L. Do NOT try to fight before you mastered this! (for now, tap S to slow down. We will change that later)

-Learn to ride in circles around your target mob. Don't attack just learn to do this in different speeds. If you're ranged, go in big circles, if not ranged, go slower and in smaller circles. Try to have the mob in sight as much as possible. Practice on the aurochs outside Harwick. If you are ranged and sometimes want to use your melee skill try to go in a 8 figure.

-Take some time and learn ALL your skills and WHAT THEY DO IN THE DIFFERENT DISCIPLINES/STANCES. Some of the skills work in conjunction with each other, with the WS-traits or with different legacies. Pay special attention to this. This is no different from normal fighting, you need to know your class. If you are using the same 1 or 2 skills all the time you are not using your steed to it's full potential.

-Now that you can control your steed with the mouse only, your other hand is free to: target mob, preform skills, change discipline and slow down your steed.

-Now assign all those different things mentioned to the keys you find convenient. The keys must off course be close to each other so you can reach them all.

-Now ride out and practice this. Start with low level mob and just preform 1 or 2 skills. When you mastered that, add a third skill and so on...
Again the aurochs outside Harwick is great to start with. Don't move on to harder mob until you can fully control your steed and it's speed, preform skills and change disciplines. All at once.

-THIS WILL TAKE SOME PRACTICE BUT IT IS WORTH IT!

-Do not use 'War-steed Auto-slowdown" (simply because this will lock up the hand that you need to preform skills etc)

-Do not use "spur on" Learn to fight instead! It's more challenging and more fun! =)

-Learn to ride in circles around your target mob. Don't attack just learn to do this in different speeds. If you're ranged, go in big circles, if not ranged, go slower and in smaller circles. Try to have the mob in sight all the time. Practice on the aurochs outside Harwick. If you are ranged and sometimes want to use your melee skill try to go in a 8 figure.

This is one of the major problems I have with MC right here. This take no skill. You don't have to master all those "tactics" you list in the rest of your post. All you have to do is have auto run on, go to full speed and hold down the turn button to whichever way you want to turn, you will eventually be close enough to hit your mob (if melee) or you can just spam skills without even facing the mob (if ranged) and eventually it will die.

As I said in my post... I'm a guard. I didn't roll a guard to kite. I rolled a guard to stand toe to toe with mobs and hit them until they fall. The fact that I have weak and limited skills and have to play in a totally different manner than the class was intended to play is absurd and foolish IMHO.

This is one of the major problems I have with MC right here. This take no skill. You don't have to master all those "tactics" you list in the rest of your post. All you have to do is have auto run on, go to full speed and hold down the turn button to whichever way you want to turn, you will eventually be close enough to hit your mob (if melee) or you can just spam skills without even facing the mob (if ranged) and eventually it will die.

As I said in my post... I'm a guard. I didn't roll a guard to kite. I rolled a guard to stand toe to toe with mobs and hit them until they fall. The fact that I have weak and limited skills and have to play in a totally different manner than the class was intended to play is absurd and foolish IMHO.

I understand that MC is not for everyone and totally agree that Guards are not supposed to kite. I don't have a guard so I don't know if their MC-skills are weak and limited.

I mean no disrespect but if this* describes how you fight a mob, I think it's a very slow way to kill it. No mater what class you have and especially if it's a melee class.

*
"All you have to do is have auto run on, go to full speed and hold down the turn button to whichever way you want to turn, you will eventually be close enough to hit your mob (if melee)"

Did you follow the link I posted? There might be some good advice on that site. One of the videos found there shows a melee class fighting the way I try to describe in my post. In the video they say that it is much better to be close to the mob all the time. The reasons for this is two, you can use your skills more often and also auto-attacks will increase damage. This tactic give higher total dps compared to riding at full speed, hit with bigger numbers but not so often.

Again, I haven't tried a guard so I cant say how they work. I can't say for sure but I think the way I try to describe would give more total dps.

I have done a lot of war-bands and many times teamed up with guards. The way they do MC I wouldn't describe as kiteing. In the beginning of the fight, while the allies still live, they go in a slow pace. Soon as only boss is left they often stand still in front of him. I also seen Guards taking the boss from start so others can focus on hes allies.

Also I find it a bit strange that you die even though your Guard and RK is L85 cause you pulled a few extra mob. Only place that I'm aware of where this could happen is while doing rottenheart.

" Most of the time I die because I pull 3 or 4 extra mobs since I can't see anything and I am making huge @rse turns or chasing some runaway mob for miles trying to get the last hit in."

PLEASE NOTE I'm not saying any of this to try to provoke!

That you cant see anything and making huge turns tells me that you might need to improve your control of both steed and camera. Also, using the technique I describe will make it possible for you to avoid pulling ads in most situations.

If you don't want to move at all since you're a guard then there could be a contradiction (depending on how you look at it) with MC.
Still, being mounted gives you a big boost to a lot of things i.e. physical mastery. Even if you stand still in front of the boss or mob.

I understand and no offense taken.
As to the death issue... that was with my RK, not my guard. My guard can def take a hit mounted or not. I just feel so unbelievably gimped. I had 2+ toolbars full of skills to pop and on a horsey suddenly I only have like 4 offensive skills.
It's just slow and boring to me... I may have not communicated properly before (Was working a noc shift) but I can survive and kill stuff fine. It's just annoying to me honestly.

I was initially intrigued by the idea of mounted combat, but soured on it pretty quickly.

1) I want to play my character, not my horse. I was playing my character for 75 levels gaining abilities, and when I mount up I get a dumbed-down version of a couple skills.
2) The performance is godawful. My FPS stays at 60 and my internet connection is great, but my horse rubberbands all over the place.

Its time to do this with mounted combat its still awful it just doesnt work with the the lotro engine , we currently got a load of changes to our skills with the new trait tree but am still having to rubber band after mobs on a terrible war horse and use a few rubbish skills on ma guard to kill them when I want to be playing with the new stuff ! Granted it isnt as painful on my loremaster with the ranged attacks but its still god awful to control and put up with when your trying to enjoy questing in the open world. It brought nothing to the game apart from the ability to sell more stuff in the lotro store so it will probably stay but it really ruins the whole experience of questing for me , rubber banding and pulling more and more mobs that I need have no interest in killing . It was a nice idea but it just cant be implemented properly in lotro and as others said i want to play my character not my horse !

I was initially intrigued by the idea of mounted combat, but soured on it pretty quickly.

1) I want to play my character, not my horse. I was playing my character for 75 levels gaining abilities, and when I mount up I get a dumbed-down version of a couple skills.
2) The performance is godawful. My FPS stays at 60 and my internet connection is great, but my horse rubberbands all over the place.

This. All of these exciting class changes and we get to play the horse a great deal. It may as well be session play.
I call my warsteeds 'Slingshot'.

Each to their own I suppose, but I find MC to be great fun. There are landscape areas where it is, for me, appropriate and areas where it is not. (Balewood, ughh) When RoR came out, I had the same opinion as the OP. Hated it.... I took a deep breath, and spent some time practicing and studying the MC trait trees. I managed to overcome my initial misgivings and worked through it to the point where now I wish there was more optional MC content, especially group-oriented. I fully understand that MC is not for everyone and do not feel that quest or epic story lines should require its' use, but I would like to see continuing development time spent on MC.

I just soloed two orange warbands in the forests of Eastfold. Navigating well enough to build fury takes a lot of practice, but mastering the terrain can really give you an edge. Fortunately there's plenty of orcs to motivate you in the woods, and just surviving a bear claw in the flank (turn rate debuff) can really force you to improve. If MC throws ya, my advice is to get back on and try again. You don't *have* to ride in circles. It's actually a bad habit to get into, and not very imaginative, but it's a way out for those who just want to get through it. I find a lot of enjoyment in the horses, they're some of the best I've ever seen in a video game. I'm fine with keeping the higher challenges out of the main storylines, but I'll often log in just to ride and I too would like to see further refinement over the years (like fixing the pogo-jumping mearh at Hengstacer, because I still do my chores [sometimes it's fun just to be a horse] and the broken animation irks me.) I was rather disappointed my steed doesn't get to level up with me this time. I get that some folks don't like it and don't want to explore the mechanics, however, so I expect there'll be a lot of accidents in Edoras. Hey, we can't all be horse-lords.

[I][FONT=Verdana]"[B]The wind of heaven is that which blows between a horse's ears.[/B]"[/FONT][/I] [SIZE=1]~ Bedouin Proverb[/SIZE]

MC can be entertaining

I find MC entertaining. To me it is like dog-fighting in a flight sim.

1) If you are just riding around in a circle it can be effective due to the way fury bonus works, but I have actually found that out-manuevering enemies by changing speeds so I can get in behind them to be even more effective. It takes some skill, but that is the way it should be. The AI makes this very challenging because the enemies are smart enough to slow down and speed up to try to shake you. I LOVE THIS aspect. So many people just want easy killing.

2) A light steed with Agility maxxed and the LI for Agility can darn near turn on a dime. If you time it correctly with a full top and then throttle back up it is VERY much like a real horse. I highly recommend the first horse for most people be a light horse and max out agility across the board early on. It helps you to get used to aspects of MC and really helps to learn. Heavier horses are much slower in turns ... just like in real life.

3) Anyone who has ridden 'many' horses in real life and tries to tell me a horse at FULL GALLOP can make a 90 degree turn and maintain full speed without some slide is absolutely incorrect. It doesn't happen, even on very nimble horses. f you try it on a Percheron the horse will not maintain health for long and will likely end up being put down. And while horses may not technically slide in real life, they do effectively move sideways on hard turns (watch some film as it is hard to notice when riding as you are leaning with the horse). I have the belief that the OP is a 'hobby rider' and has not ridden at full gallop. You just cannot do what the OP is stating.

All that being said, I do have some issues.

1) I find the Fury bonus thing to be wrong. For one, Fury should only have a contribution to melee attacks were the force and momentum behind the attack could be effected. For ranged combat i think moving should be a negative as I would guess you cannot should as well while moving. Maybe that is the way it works, but it seems like I still get a big fury boost even when using ranged attacks.

2) Also, the jumping issue is horrible due to lag. The horses frequently appear to have jumped over something and then 10 seconds later you warp back to the fence and your health goes way down because something is beating on you while you are running in place. I believe the horses are running faster than the screen updates, and I have a ridiculous PC and great connection. I can't even imagine how difficult MC could be for those on an average PC with an average high speed connection.

3) The 'Move to' feature for NPC's or landscape items (resource nodes, quest pickups, etc.) works horribly. You walk almost to the spot with the 'move to' feature but then get 'you are too far away'. Then you have to gently nudge forward a few times to get close enough. It is very tedious over hundreds of quests and such. This could easily be fixed by coding to change how close you get on a 'move to' while mounted.

4) As others have stated, the constant ADD's of NPC's when fighting is ridiculous in some areas. Even if you are very good at simply tailing the enemy instead of circle fighting they still run all over the place which can cause up to 4-5 adds. Not much fun if they happen to run near a warband and you attract one of the outliers to an Elite Master group or something. Sometimes I enjoy this as it adds to the 'know when to avoid following and make them come back to you', but in reality it can get old rather quickly when you are trying to get things done in the 30-60 minutes you have to game.

I like MC overall, but I could easily do without it. No game that I have played has a better setup for MC. WoW has no MC, EQ2 you just fight normally but appear to be mounted, and I don't know of others.

I recently returned after a big break, shortly after RoR. At first I too, was taken aback by the atrocious SUV on an ice rink feeling. Cranking up agility, even on a medium steed helped alot though. I have since gotten used to it and on the times where I don't aggro the entire zone I do enjoy the MC.

Since the old days, I have always grumpily accepted 'instances',..but for MC I can see controlled instances where large swaths of terrain are reserved for specific MC quests being alot of fun . Sort of like MC Skirmishes. Lotro does have a few for the EPIC quests that I've run into and not having to deal with trash mobs everywhere was a sigh of relief( other than the occasional running into barriers). Maybe 'soft' instances,..like phasing would be better.

As for the 30ft melee distance,...I understand and appreciate why it's there,.as it's hugely difficult to time anything that accurate depending on lag,.etc. Some cool moments are when you are riding neck and neck to the mob and meleeing them.

I do think they should kill the cooldowns on Any melee MC skill to up the excitement.

I do not want them to get rid of landscape MC entirely though. Maybe just spread out the trash mobs. Remember Moria on release? You couldn't walk ten feet without bumping into something

With the turning radius of a truck and handling of a race car, what's not to love? Being able to drift on a horse is absolute fun for me.

Only problem is how when you toggle the auto-track skill AI always makes the player character twitch such that you only attack from your horse's flank, which in turn causes the camera to twitch as well, which gives me headaches.

the movement is easy once you get used to it. the heavy horse runs mobs over and mine is only level 30. once i put the points into the horse itself and not just the skill line, the things gonna handle like a bmw

forget this light horse cr@p. learn how to make the horse respond to what youre trying to do and smash everything w damage. one word... trample

I still hate it - but I finally got the horse maxed out and I am slightly more proficient at it now. All credit to my good natured steed, Loca, who despite being run into buildings face first at full tilt and off the occasional cliff, never bucks me off when it gets down to serious fighting time.

There is one reason that I absolutely hate Mounted combat and until turbine finds a way to remove that reason I will always hate mounted combat no matter how much easier and smoother they make it. The reason is ALL MY SKILLS ARE NERFED TO HELL AND BLOODY USELESS BECAUSE SOME &&&HOLE IS ON A HORSE!!! Rant over.

I have spent years developing my characters and learning to use their skills and the minute MC rears its ugly head then all my stuns, mezzes, traps, etc etc etc are all changed to be bloody slows! The whole game lurches to a stop and 70+ levels of skills are all altered to accomodate an extreemly minor and unnecessary part of the game. My characters lose all their skills when they mount that warhorse and they become a basic clone of all other classes with limited skills that are unrelated to their class and all they have experienced. If they don't mount and stay on foot then they still lose half their skills because the skills are nerfed and no longer operate the way they should as it would interfere with MC! Roots, Stuns, mezzes, all are major parts of character classes and all are lost as soon as a mounted mob appears. I play this game to play MY characters not turn the characters I have lovingly developed into faceless and insipid clones with virtually no skills and little to distinguish between the classes.

When Turbine stops wrecking normal gameplay to accomodate MC and allows me to use my characters skills they way they are used in every other region where MC doesn't rear its ugly head, then I may try it again but as far as I am conconcerned it is the worst part of the game BECAUSE IT IS NOT PART OF THE GAME, it is a minigame that is unrelated to the rest of the game. It is also why I haven't bought the expansions for my other accounts and why my husband hasn't bought it at all. And please don't get me started on BBs and my character's skills!